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Publication
Working the day or the night shift? Foraging schedules of Cory’s shearwaters vary according to marine habitat
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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The diel vertical migration of zooplankton and many other organisms is likely to
affect the foraging behaviour of marine predators. Among these, shallow divers, such as many
seabirds, are particularly constrained by the surface availability of prey items. We analysed the atsea
activity of a surface predator of epipelagic and mesopelagic prey, Cory’s shearwater Calonectris
diomedea, on its several wintering areas (spread throughout the temperate Atlantic Ocean
and the Agulhas Current). Individual shearwaters were mainly diurnal when wintering in warmer
and shallower waters of the Benguela, Agulhas and Brazilian Currents, and comparatively more
nocturnal in colder and deeper waters of the Central South Atlantic and the Northwest Atlantic.
Nocturnality also correlated positively with bathymetry and negatively with sea-surface temperature
within a single wintering area. This is possibly related to the relative availability of epipelagic
and mesopelagic prey in different oceanic sectors, and constitutes the first evidence of such flexibility
in the daily routines of a top marine predator across broad spatial scales, with clear expression
at population and individual levels
Description
Keywords
Foraging behaviour Seabirds Diel vertical migration Sea-surface temperature Bathymetry
Citation
Dias, P. S., Granadeiro, J. P., Catry, P.(2012). Working the day or the night shift? Foraging schedules of Cory’s shearwaters vary according to marine habitat. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 467, 245-252 Doi: 10.3354/meps09966
Publisher
Inter-Research